LitPick Review
Nefertiti, the Spidernaut is about an insect who is sent into space. Stephanie Countryman, a NASA scientist, was searching for a jumping spider for her new experiment. It was felt that jumping spiders in this experiment would not be able to eat food as there would be little gravity on International Space Station. They would just float, finding it hard to hunt in space and therefore survive. Stephanie received an egg sac laid by a Johnson jumping spider along with a bag of fruit flies so that the spiderlings could eat. However, only four spiderlings survived. For the space mission, Stephanie chose the largest female spider. Nefertiti was named after an Egyptian queen. Survival tests were taken. Does Nefertiti proved her worth for the amazing role of spidernaut? Is the space mission a success?
Opinion:
The book is written exquisitely in the simplest form even a layman can understand with a lot of useful information such as facts about Nefertiti, vocabulary, etc. The illustrations are bright and vivid. The book is cleverly written. It is easy to envision the mission of spidernaut for weeks through this splendid work of the author. Spidernaut lived only 10 months, but her true story of traveling 42 million miles inspires us humans. It truly is a motivation for youngsters to be brave and courageous like the spidernaut to pursue their aspirations that are positive. I would recommend this book to youngsters for the gem it is. Hats off to the author.
